Hagin wins Grand Prix of Norway but second place boosts Emirati’s championship bid as team-mate Al Tayer joins him on podium
Team Abu Dhabi’s Rashed Al Qemzi extended his lead in the 2019 UIM F2 World Championship with a second place finish in today’s Grand Prix of Norway which brought a first series victory for German Stefan Hagin.
The result gives Al Qemzi a 13-point advantage in the race for the F2 title which he won in 2017, and he was joined on the podium by Abu Dhabi team-mate Rashed Al Tayer thanks to a battling performance to finish third in Tønsberg.
After his opening round victory in Lithuania and his second successive pole position, Al Qemzi had high hopes of another win, although he will be content to have grown his lead from
Sweden’s Daniel Segenmark who finished fifth in Norway.
Al Qemzi’s victory hopes might have been over even before a lap had been completed as an apparent mechanical issue left him struggling to leave the start, with the majority of the other 17 boats surging away from him.
But the Emirati driver made a superb recovery, rapidly climbing to second behind Hagin on the first lap and he was piling the pressure on the German when American Brent Dillard crashed to bring a yellow flag on lap 14.
Dillard’s exit saw Al Tayer, who had started in seventh place, move into third, and after the restart, despite Al Qemzi’s efforts to catch Hagin, the top three remain unchanged all the way to the finish.